1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to techniques for drawing three-dimensional (3D) graphics and particularly to recording media having recorded thereon 3D graphics drawing data shareable by frames and thus drawn and methods of drawing such data.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, 3D graphics drawing devices rapidly processing 3D images have been increasingly developed for personal computers, video game machines and the like to provide fine images of visual realism. A conventional 3D graphics drawing device requires that a coordinate or the like of a drawing primitive be obtained for each frame by means of a geometric operation.
Rapidly calculating a primitive's coordinate or the like requires providing a 3D graphics drawing device with a geometric-operation unit expensive and highly capable of performing a geometric operation. This disadvantageously increases the cost of the 3D graphics drawing device.
A 3D graphics drawing device may dispense with such an expensive geometric-operation unit and instead the data of a vertex of a polygon that is previously processed through a geometric operation, such as vertex coordinate data, color data, transmittance data, texture mapping coordinate data, and stored in an external memory may be drawn for each frame to draw a primitive. In this arrangement, however, each frame needs to have drawing data for the primitive. This disadvantageously requires an external memory having a enormous storage capacity.